“Elvedui” The Last Elf
by filigod
Summary: One Elf chooses not to sail, and to test Galadriel’s prophecy of her race’s fate in mortal lands.
1. “navaer gwaithen” farewell, my people

_The sorrow of the Elves is they live beyond their time  
'Til all the world forgets them, save in tales and rhyme.  
~ Arafel, "Tree of Swords and Jewels" (filk by Heather Alexander for Cherryh's book of the same name)_

"Sing, you said." Thaliell's voice held no laughter in it, ringing high and harshly from the canopy of stone branches stretched overhead. "Laugh. For we are those who have stayed true to what we are, forsaking neither our land nor our ways! Moths who follow torches, you called them, the Restless, who went there and back again, and brought their feuds and hopeless causes with them. Our songs and hunts and feasting you called greater treasures than light trapped in jewels, their vile attempts to ape the Powers with things they shaped but did not truly create. And now you would bid us cut the trees of Middle-earth to fashion ships, abandon all we have, and follow them, become them, when the Shadow is lifted at last?"

"Are you finished, _Laswathel_?" the Elvenking asked grimly.

"Look, the chickadee is scolding the hawk," said one of the spectators lounging against the columns. A few begin to make up a lively tune:

"_Why fly ye south, the chickadee said,  
When leaves are gold and sky is clear,_  
_You have a nest to rest your head,_  
_Why leave you now your forest dear?_  
_The mockingbird did laugh and dance—_"

Thranduil held up his hand, and the singers piped down reluctantly, a few titters echoing around his audience chamber.

Red-faced, Thaliell stood with back straight and hands clenched at her sides, one booted toe upon the dais of his throne. Her hair was the spun gold common to the inhabitants Greenleaves, including the king. Few now remembered that this was remarkable, for his lineage came from Outside. It had helped his father Oropher win their hearts long ago: a high lord of the Sindar renouncing the wars and troubles of the nobler kindreds, calling the Wood-elves pure and free, not ignorant and rustic as they were accounted by those who had grown great in power, wisdom, and sorrow.

"Yes, my lord," she muttered, the reminder of her lost brother doing little to improve her temper.

Her father rose from his chair of carven stone, one of the few signs of the world he had left behind. Wood-elves did not dwell in stone halls hewed by dwarves; that was a precaution and luxury that Thranduil had learned from Thingol. Moreover, he called himself a king. King of a shunned land, king of a lesser race, but the Elvenking, in these days when the High-elves and their High Kings were history, and King Thingol a memory only to Thranduil himself. "There are two paths for us," he stated. "To dwindle here, while Men wax in power and slowly erode our forests, our world, changing it as we ourselves change until we are a pathetic ghost of what we were— or to seek new forests in a land that does not change. I would not abandon Middle-earth, were there any other way. But it will soon forsake us. We cannot hold to what we are, if we stay."

"What nonsense is this?" Thaliell scowled up at him. "You have been listening to mad Queen Galadriel's prophecies, or some such higher lore. Perhaps the Eldar have some reason to fear, but why should we? They're just afraid they'll lose their powers and become like _us_again, living in harmony with the seasons. We have autumn and spring; I'll wager there's none where they're going."

There was an air of indulgent boredom in the grand chamber; few of the Elves were paying much attention to her gripes or the king's strange and cryptic warnings. Thranduil could at times be a grim lord, despite his family's adoption of the Wood-elves' relaxed lifestyle, and his mutterings tended to be tolerated rather than heeded. By his counsel they had been saved from Dol Guldur's shadow, moving north instead of fighting the long defeat with the rest of their race. But they did not know the sorrows and hardships they had all but missed; stories like Amroth's were for them just pretty ballads. The memory of the years of horror, the Last Alliance when two-thirds of them had died, had faded. Even the Battle of Five Armies was seldom mentioned anymore. The Wood-elves had always remained eerily isolated from the heavy cares of their kindred, and the house of Oropher had encouraged them to remain so.

"I wished to shield you," he said softly. "From orc, fire, grief, and knowledge of these things. But in the end I cannot hold back time, not even were I to take up a Ring like the one _She_ used to keep Lórien preserved like a deer's head stuffed and dried and pinned to a wall. And my son is gone. I am sorry, Thaliell."

"Lord—"

He lifted the wreath of autumn leaves and berries from his hair and set it upon his seat. "I am no longer your lord," he said flatly. "Follow or do not follow. I have told you why. You must decide for yourselves."

The singers were busy again as he strode from the hall, brushing past his daughter who stood frozen, staring at the Elvenking's crown.

"_O, where are we going? O, where are we going?  
The seagulls are playing, the oarsmen are rowing!  
The river is singing, the sea-winds are blowing!  
Come, follow me south  
To the shore and the mouth  
Of Anduin!  
Come, follow me west  
Where the forests are best  
In Aman!_"

So his people were still singing as they dragged the last of the boats down to the river amidst playful splashing, laughter and the last of the wine from Dorwinion. Their hunting dogs romped in the river's edge and raced along the shore, kicking up mud. It comforted Thaliell a little, to see how such drastic change did not seem to matter to her people any more than to their hounds.

She stood in the edge of the new clearing they had made, cutting birch and oak for the pretty gray boats that now bobbled like a flock of geese in the water. Swans, she remembered, were the symbol of Lórien and their westernmost kin in the Undying Lands, but geese suited the gaggle of laughing Wood-elves pushing off from the shore, as if setting out on one more hunt or a visit to Dale and Lake-town. Maybe Aman could not change them, and her grandfather's mistrust of the West had been groundless.

Almost Thaliell began to walk down to them, but she squared her shoulders. Her decision was made.

Thranduil had his arm around her and was watching them. "It's time," he murmured, that word which was almost a curse to them. "Will you not come, Thaliell? It breaks my heart to abandon you here, alone."

"I'll be fine." She smiled and kissed his cheek. "I have the beeches, and the whole of Greenwood, and there's Men to tease if I grow weary of my own voice. Give my brother greetings."

He sighed. "Perhaps it's better that one of us remains: Middle-earth will be a lesser place when the last Elf is gone. Whatever becomes of you, Thaliell, I am proud." He touched the wreath of ivy in her hair. "You are Queen, now," he teased.

"Get on, gloomy eyes," she chided. "Get to your land of peace and light and joy, or whatever pretty nonsense it is my brother spouted in your ear the last time we saw him. Maybe the bliss of Aman can stop even you from fretting."

"Thaliell—"

"Look after them, my lord," she murmured in his ear. "Don't let them change."

"In Aman, we never will." His grey eyes met hers: the one visible sign that they were not the same blood as the rest of the Silvan folk. She nodded slightly. The Wood-elves might not even realize how profound the change was, when they had come to Aman, leaving seasons and mortal lands behind forever. They would take the world however it came to them. They must.

Reluctantly Thranduil let her step away. There was a certain amount of hooting and whistles from the boatsmen, waving cheerfully at Thaliell. Few really understood that they would not see her again. It was better that way.

The last king of the Elves east of the Sea, king no longer, strode to the boat at the head of the vast flotilla, leapt in, and cast off the hawser binding it to shore. Only on his cheeks were there tears.

Thaliell stood alone at the edge of Greenwood the Great, Lasgalen, the wood of Greenleaves, named for her brother but not as Men knew him. The mortals' name for it, Mirkwood, would outlast all the rest. Across the river was Lórien. But it was a ghost now. The last few golden leaves rattled on the branches, although the mallorns used to cling tenaciously to theirs until the new green came. _As I will _she vowed. But they did not look like mallorns now. The great-girthed, queenly trees with bark of smooth silvery grey were no more than beeches, fairest trees of forest. And she had those a-plenty near Thranduil's empty halls.

Thaliell turned her horse northward and did not bother to watch her people vanish in the cold and foggy dawn.


	2. “i faroth ereb” the lone hunter

The snows came early. The challenge of enduring winter's cold gave Thaliell something to distract her, although for Elves it was not the same as mortalkind. The winds might bite, but ordinary weather could not touch them.

She ran fleet-footed under the beeches, as she and her brother used to do together, when the glades were green in spring. Branch and twig were bare, frosted in glass where the snow had thawed in the sun then hardened at nightfall. All was silver, black and grey. The stars high above were as bright as ever. Eärendil's star (less loved by those who did not wish to follow it) had set, as had the moon. Thaliell ran in the night before all days on the shores of Cuinevian, under the untroubled sky, before the Foe came into the world and made the dark something to fear. It was her curse that she could still remember that story and many of the griefs that came later, the tales she had pried from her father's reluctant lips. Her brother had cared less for such stories than for song, the hunt and bright sun; he'd preferred to confront enemies and legends only at need, by bow or knife. He had grown on his journeys, but he was still singing of Greenwood's beeches and the cedars of Ithilien, not days of old, when he set sail.

Snow flew beneath Thaliell's thin shoes like the lake beneath a swallow's wings.

Her feet left no footprints.

Her people had left few more.

* * *

_When winter passed, she came again,  
And her song released the sudden spring,  
Like rising lark, and falling rain,  
And melting water bubbling..._

* * *

Thaliell paused in mid-verse. There were voices on the Elf-road below, the secret track through the woods that cut across the northern third of the forest. None but Elves had used it since the Shadow had been lifted, for Men had repaired the Old Forest Road and left that free for all dauntless souls to pass through. But the Elf-path remained.

The voices were gruff and unlovely, their owners booted and squat. Dwarves.

"No, they're all gone, Floí. I know it. Gloín son of Gimli says it, and he's the expert on them, you know."

There was a chorus of laughter. "Does he still wear that bit of hair dipped in glass? Some love-knot from an Elven maid, and his father gone to seek her across the Sea! Think she fancied his beard dripping with seaweed?"

"Last I saw, he still wore it."

"That was Galadriel's token," a third piped up thoughtfully. "You know, last Queen of the Elves before they went away. Lady of the Golden Wood and all."

"Ah," the first speaker said carelessly. "Well, she's gone now. What's this about a Golden Wood? Where's the gold?"

"That's just a figure of speech," the loremaster explained. "It's that little forest south of Mirkwood, other side of the River. You can see it's all beeches still, and if you go there in the fall, it's golden everywhere. But they also named it that on account of her hair. They called themselves the _Galadrim_, the people of Galadriel, lady o' light."

_Galadhrim_, Thaliell thought irritably. _People of the trees. Our kin, not hers._

"Looks like Kili's been well-taught by the Lord of the Glittering Caves," the first speaker laughed. "Great tales you got stuffed in that head of yours."

They tromped on a little ways, kicking up last year's leaves, which never used to drift across the path.

At length Kili spoke up again. "I wonder if that old Elvenking's hall still has any gold or jewels in it. The one at the edge of the wood, you know, what used to trade with us for our metalwork. Some of the finest we gave 'em. Did they take it when they left?"

"We can find that out, easily enough," the first speaker said carelessly. "This here path goes right past the gate. Want to turn aside? Might be haunted."

Floí shrugged. "No thank you, Master Dorin. I'm not much for pretty little Elf-jewels."

Kili whistled. "You numbskulls! If there's any left, why, we could have it!"

"Want to collect on 'the old bond between the Wood and the Mountain,' eh," Dorin laughed. "Guess there's some use in knowing the old tales!"

"I suppose he has a point—"

"So do I." Thaliell stood before them in the path which had been clear a moment before. She had an arrow nocked to string. Its point was aimed at earth, but if they had not forgotten every tale they'd heard, they knew she could move quicker than thought.

One of the Dwarves gave a shout, and they reached for their axes, wary and confounded. "Your pardon, Ma'am," said Kili. "Just passing through. Men don't much like our using their road anymore, nor do we. I'm sure you can understand that."

"Don't like paying their toll, you mean, and hoping to collect a little yourself with a little burglary. I hope you remembered to bring yourselves a Hobbit."

They held their tongues, more wise than their ancestors in similar circumstances, although there was some whispered muttering.

Thaliell stared down at them. They seemed smaller than she remembered, wizened and knobby-fingered and unlovely. It was hard to believe they could have fashioned the delicate string of emeralds she wore. "Does the friendship of the Mountain and the Wood still hold?" she asked grimly.

"It holds, lady," said Kili.

"Then you may go. But do not put your mind to Elvish gold, lest we repent that alliance once more."

There was much doffing of hoods, and they bowed low, waving them before their knees and pledging their service and their family's.

She waved them away tiredly, dropping her arrow back into a quiver with a hard tap. "I need neither, but thank you."

They went on. Dorin at the rear halted and waited for the others to go on ahead, then turned back. "Lady?" he asked quietly. "Are the others gone?"

"Some are left in the world," she said vaguely, her eyes remote.

He bowed. "You may not see us either, much longer," he murmured. "We are going under the Mountain. Fare you well."

She gave no reply, but nodded a fraction.

He squared his shoulders and went on.

Turning, she sped away into the wood and lost herself trying to overtake a doe. It was an old sport of her people. Flowers of spring blossomed under her feet, and she did not crush them, weaving a nimble path between as she raced the wind. The legs of the doe flashed before her, its tail white in the darkness. Rare shafts of sunlight slashed down through the darkening wood. It was spring, and she was the Elf of the wood, and it was hers, always and forever, not to rule but tend. Faster, and faster, and in a moment she would leap astride the hind and ride—

She tripped and tumbled facefirst into the waters of a stream. Hoofbeats struck the opposite bank and pattered off.

It was the river that crossed the Elf-path, which she vaguely remembered was a source of fear to all mortals, on whom it had strange effects. Elves never troubled themselves about it, but they did not swim in it, usually crossing by boat. The boat was gone.

She stared at the black undulating water and the rings widening from her shoulders. Her arrows were wet, and she should get up. On her knees in the mud was no place for a Queen. But it was oddly soothing.

Humming, she rose to her feet and turned back into the forest. She would find a bough on which to stretch out and dry herself, and all would be well.

* * *

Whenever she returned to visit the king's hall, she was struck by the silence. She carried a torch with her, going from room to room. It had never been home, really, but her people lived here. She tried to remember all their names. She sang in the shadows. The torch flickered and burned low. Tired, she curled up in a room and awoke in darkness.

Her boot crunched on a brittle dried wreath of oak and berries when she left. It had been nibbled by mice, who had evidently tried to drag it somewhere for a nest. It was coming unravelled._ The Elvenking,_ she thought absently, wondering why he'd bothered to leave it there. _He used to sit at the head of our table with a wand of oak, and my people sang in the forest glade. I do miss the singing._

She remembered sobbing after some of them did not come home from a war— a battle? — east of the wood. Her father had taken her into his arms and promised her they had not died, that their spirits had gone to the Undying Lands where they would live happily forever.

_But not here. Not with us._

Her brother had showed her his broken knife; it had been his first battle.

She remembered Galion, the butler, lying dead. She had taken up his splintered spear in her hand, turning it over and over, tasting the first pangs of despair. She had needed only to fall upon it, and she would follow him. She could still follow her people that way now, perhaps, to the blissful West where the stories ended.

Perhaps, but she was not willing to take the risk; it was only a story.


	3. “leithian uin nath” escaping the net

The leaves were shearing off, red and gold flames falling away, and Thaliell had come south and west in her wanderings, following the deer. There were others following them too this day. Thaliell always felt mirth and strange pity for the heavy-footed hunters; so much harder it was for them to catch buck or coney and bring it back home to their hungry cubs, since they blundered around like bears in the woods drunk on honey. She trailed after them as evening came on, listening to their talk. At first it was strange, but eventually their manner of speech came back to her enough to make out most of what they said.

"There was a great burning," an old graybeard was saying, who was kindling fire for the evening's camp. "You see the stumps of the giant trees, here and there in the wood: almost gone now, you have to look closely. Fire raged from Long Mountain all up the southern half of the wood, and the smoke covered the West in darkness for days. That was the last battle between Elves and the Dark Lord."

"I heard that was from the fiery mountan far away down south," said another, giving him a quizzical look. "And anyway, that war was a Man's war. Elessar and all, you know, the first King, he beat the Enemies. There were no Elves in the stories with 'im, none but his lady, and she was the last one that stayed behind."

"Well, there were still Elves up north here," the old one said obstinately, "whatever they say in Stone-land. They never pay any attention to Mirkwood; all too high and mighty down in their cities to know what happens in the northlands. There were Elves here, I tell you, and the King got the credit for it, but the Elves always fought the Black Hand, in all the stories; Men just helped. We like to think we're greater than we are."

A third man laughed. "Poor ol' Boric, still sore over that lame buck that got away from him."

A younger man spoke up softly. "You know, I've heard some of the old tales of Mirkwood, back before the Fire, he said carefully. They do say there were Elves, on the north side. But they kept to themselves, mostly, and a strange folk they were. They guarded their forest realm with something they called the Girdle of Melian, and it was woven of silk so fine you couldn't see it, but it would cut a man's face if he tried to pass through. It was their big spiders, Shelob and all, that guarded the edge of the Woodland Realm. And Melian, the White Lady, the Queen of the Elves, she was the one who controlled 'em with her magic ring. A dangerous witch. Few escaped her nets, and fewer still returned to live and tell of it."

Thaliell hopped down from the branches overhead, and her feet made no sound, and men reached for their hunting knives, then stopped, frozen. She was clad almost like them in well-tanned leathers, and her bow and quiver were plain, but her face was fair and glowing in the light of the young fire, the braids in her golden hair glinting like chains of finest copper, and her grey eyes were mirthful, scornful, and filled with countless years like a deep mountain lake left behind by glaciers three Ages past. You mustn't believe all you hear, she said very gently, as if speaking to children.

And none stirred as she sat down beside the fire, drawing her green cloak about herself, and none spoke, and she began to sing.

She sang of the autumn feast and the king's hall on the greensward, platters passing hand to hand, the torches flickering under the trees. She sang of harps of gold and flutes of silver, Elvish lords and ladies with wreaths of leaves crowning their hair. She sang of the dances before dawn, all the stars of heaven, and echoes of the ancient stories about the time before the sun and moon were born, when Elves walked the broad forests alone, and nothing yet had been fashioned of wood, metal, or stone. She sang of the running of deer and the flowing of streams, the clang of the gates of the Elvenking's hall, Lake-town, the Elven villages along the shore, and the rich red wine of Dorwinion. She sang of the little hunting dog her brother had given her with her first bow.

They were spellbound. So perhaps was the fire: it did not burn low, during her singing, although surely she had been there for hours when at last she fell silent. The silence lasted for some time.

"And were there battles?" one asked finally, voice quavering.

Thaliell shook her head. "There were, but not in the Woodland Realm. Other Elves made war. We were forest people, and lived the forest way. That was none of our doing."

"But the Fire," pressed the greybeard, edging away from her now that he had use of his limbs again. "'A great battle and fire under the trees,' they say there was. And I've seen the stumps."

"Yes," she said slowly. "That was true. There was another Elven kingdom to the south, across the River. They made war in the forest. They were afraid of shadows, and called this place _Mirkwood_, even as you. They had begun to forget that the Firstborn arose before the Sun and Moon, and their eyes could no longer pierce the darkness. Yes, the Golden Wood brought fire."

Something nagged the back of her mind. She could no longer remember those days; she had done her best to forget them. But her words did not seem right. Still, she knew it was trouble with the Lady of the Golden Wood, and her friends the Dwarves, which had sent Thaliell's father and grandfather to move north, away from her webs. Something had happened back then. It didn't matter now. They were gone.

The men were wary and nervous, now, moving restlessly like the leaves of trees before the oncoming storm. Several were gathering up their scant possessions, making ready to depart. Their hands stayed neared knife-hilts or bow-strings, but they were obviously afraid to threaten their strange guest, and the spell of her music was still in their faces, leaving them dazed and muttering. A few, like the young man who had spoken of spiders, still had not stirred. They simply stared at her, the hungry lost yearning of hearts who did not even know what it was beyond their grasp.

Thaliell caught that look on her own face, sometimes, when she stood by the River and looked down into its waters, the last place she had seen her people before they took leave of her. She understood, and pitied them. Therefore she rose and slipped back amidst the trees. She had troubled the strange creatures as much as they could bear.

"Few escape her nets," the greybeard muttered, after she had passed from mortal sight.

Yet she she did not go far. She waited with arms folded, shoulders against the bark of an old beech, knowing at least one had been netted by her speech.

He came with the moon. Tall, for a man, and he did not seem to fear spiders any longer. His bow was at his shoulder, but forgotten. His fur vest, she noticed with amusement, had been brushed and combed, and he seemed to have made some effort with his hair as well, although still he wore only the simple leather tunic, breeches, boots of the Wood-men. He strode eagerly into the forest, and would have been lost; for he did not see the Elf until she spoke his name. That she had learned from his thoughts while he sat listening with the others.

He stopped in his tracks and came back to her. "I knew you were no dream," he said, quick and eagerly. "Not this time. Thank you."

"For what?" the Elf asked, amused. Yes, the fish-hook had caught fast. Almost she regretted it.

His face was clear; he must be young for a human male. His blue eyes were bright and burning. "For being true." Bold he was, planting himself before her, a suppliant.

"You had many stories about me that weren't," she reminded him. "Are you not afraid I will feed you to the spiders?"

He laughed. "There are no spiders, Lady," he returned. "I was listening! But I heard more." Bold indeed. He studied her face as one might search the ground for footprints. "You are so lonely," he whispered. "And so far from home. How could they have left you here?"

There was a silence: the trees paid no mind. The kindness in his eyes was matched by need. Thaliell leaned close, until the boy trembled. "I am home," she laughed, breath puffing against his cheek.

She turned and vanished into the shadows, as swiftly as a deer. He must find his own way home.


	4. Am methed to the end

The seasons flew like geese, rising and returning; the leaf-loam piled in deep drifts in the dark glens where the axes of Men did not penetrate. These places were fewer and fewer each year.

Thaliell danced with the children of Men and let them put flowers and berries in her hair. She sipped milk from the plates their mothers left out for her and plaited their ponies' manes and tails. She slept in stable-rafters now, for the winters were colder than those endless summer nights that misted her memory, when the stars and moon were bright and her people feasted on sawn logs in woodland glades. She had been the Queen of the Elves once, she used to tell one golden-haired lass who crept out to find her in the dell behind the Woodmen's village. Almost Thaliell believed it.

In time, for time was all she had, the girl-children no longer sat upon her knee, for they had grown large, or she very small. She slipped into thickets and hid from the wars that swept across the north, where the trees were felled for the smithy's forge and the army's engines. Each year she traveled a little farther south, flitting from glade to glade and hollow to riverbank, dwelling in fox-holes.

One autumn shed stole boldly across the great bridge over the River to the smaller forest to the south. She had a vague recollection that she should not enter it, but Men feared it more: a small misty island of beeches and birches, untouched, full of fogs and hanging mists that echoed with strange voices. She did not mind them or the faerie-lights that sometimes flickered high up in the tree-tops. They reminded her of... of something, like torches, like lamps, like starlight from a time when stars were brighter and had names in other than mortal tongues.

She came at length to rising knoll of white birches and a mound strewn with yellow flowers like the sun. There she made her home, on that hallowed spot where no mortal foot had ever trod (save two, and they had long ago passed beyond the confines of this world). She called herself Elanor, after the flowers that grew there, and was content for many centuries. But at last, when all the world was changed again, even the power of the last Queen of Elves and Men waned, and its girdle of memory ceased to shelter that hallowed place.

The copse of gnarled, ancient birches was cleared. Rolling fields of grain and scattered settlements sprouted where trees and glades had been. Circles of stones rose up, marking the turn of seasons with mortal precision. Lichen covered the stones. The weather turned cold and wet. The rich loam blew away, until only stony soil and sheep-cropped grass covered the dells and mounds that Men had once erected to bury their dead.

One mound was different, although only a few bards remembered it. There, some said, a brave harper might sleep and be gifted with song or madness. There, others said, a Faerie Queen might snatch a pretty child or man away under the hill. There, still others said, a mighty King of Men had once been buried, who had once wed the Queen of the Elves and returned after a thousand years.

She no longer heard them. But on a midsummer's night, dancing under the stars, a wee sprite who did not remember her name might for a moment imagine the standing stones of Men to be the boles of great-girthed silver trees with golden leaves.

* * *

"Do you see now wherefore your coming is to us as the footstep of Doom? For if you fail, then we are laid bare to the Enemy. Yet if you succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlórien will fade, and the tides of Time will sweep it away. We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and to be forgotten." ~ Galadriel, _The Fellowship of the Ring_


End file.
